The both of us have battled: the practices and politics of female partners in the Canadian Season Agricultural Workers Program

Through an analysis of qualitative, ethnographic data, I locate the narratives of nine Mexican women married to migrants within the context of capitalist globalization, state policies, and local gender ideologies. In doing so, I advocate for a theoretical approach to migration which combines elements of structural theories of migration and network theoretical approaches. These women’s narratives position them at the juncture of capitalism and other social relations, and show them to be active agents in migration. Not only is their labour critical to the maintenance of migration patterns and the capitalist relations into which migrants and non-migrants are incorporated, but women’s labour is also imbued with social meanings.